Breaking Point “The Bull Roarer” (October 21, 1963)

“Am I a man or . . . a homosexual?”  I’m not certain if that was the first time the word was uttered in a non-news program on American television (though I suspect it was), but I am sure that a lot of jaws dropped among the handful of people watching this short-lived psychiatric drama when it tackled this taboo topic a full ten years before any other series would try again.  The character asking the question is Paul Knopf (Lou Antonio), a confused young man seeking psychiatric care because he doesn’t share his loutish construction worker brother’s taste for brawling and womanizing.  Paul thinks he may be gay, but his doctor (and the writer, Ernest Kinoy) gently advance a subtler idea: that our notion of masculinity is cripplingly reductive and exclusionary, and that anyone who doesn’t fit “the great American male image, the great western hero, strong, silent, half neanderthal man, half Don Juan . . . is considered feminine.”  The show may seem dated today because it skirts the actual topic of homosexuality, but it’s a tolerant, anti-conformist piece that must have spoken volumes to its intended audience in 1963.  While Paul doesn’t turn out to be gay, it’s not assumed that it would be disastrous if he were (unlike in Marcus Welby’s justly criticized take on “latent homosexuality” a decade later, “The Other Martin Loring”), and the kicker is Kinoy’s sly implication that Paul’s macho brother (Ralph Meeker), who keeps finding excuses to grapple around with other men, may be the one who really has cause to question his sexual identity.  Ralph Senensky, a terrific actor’s director, does all the right things to bring out the heart in the story, particularly in the scenes depicting the awkward romance between Paul and the sweet young woman (Mariette Hartley) who likes him because he’s sensitive